America is the noisiest country that ever existed. One is waked up in the morning, not by the singing of the nightingale, but by the steam whistle.

Would you like to know the great drama of my life? It is that I have put my genius into my life...I have put only my talent into my works.

She lives the poetry she cannot write.

I played with an idea, and grew willful; tossed it into the air; transformed it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent with fancy, and winged it with paradox.

Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation, and conversation must have a common basis, and between two people of widely different culture the only common basis possible is the lowest level.

I have a simple taste, only the best.

If this is the way Queen Victoria treats her prisoners, she doesn't deserve to have any.